Talk:Black Women Syllabus

Some ground rules everyone should keep in mind editing this or any article: Anyways, this is an interesting topic, so we all want to keep this article neat and tidy and within policy. Happy Squirrel (talk) 13:55, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * No external links in the body of an article.
 * References should be used to verify information. For instance, if you stick a reference at the end of the sentence "bears eat salmon", the references should at least mention this fact and not just be about bears or salmon. In the case of this list, a reference following a book's entry should give evidence that this book is in the list, not just be about the book.
 * Please, please leave edit summaries. That way your fellow editors can see at a glance what you are doing.

Length of the list
I am getting rather concerned about the long lists of works and authors. At the moment, this is most of the article text. This detracts from the actual point of the article which is to discuss the movement. None of the entries are sourced, either and frequently have policy compliance issues. However, deleting the lists outright seems certain to get reverted, so I thought some pre-emptive discussion would be useful. As I see it there are 3 ways forward:
 * 1) Remove the lists entirely. Focus on the movement with perhaps an example here and there to illustrate points made.
 * 2) Keep only entries with articles. This will keep the most notable entries/articles and should produce short, illustrative and maintainable lists. It goes without saying, these lists will have to be referenced.
 * 3) Keep the whole list and move to List of entries in the Black Women Syllabus. Again, the whole list will need references. Keep the main article looking a lot like option 1.

My preference is 1 since I feel this will provide a better avenue for growth of this article and will allow us to create a list when it is more set. Please let me know what you think. Absent any responses, I will probably implement 3 in a few days. Thanks! Happy Squirrel (talk) 21:30, 14 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi Happysquirrel. Having written a completely redundant post below this, I thought it may be helpful to provide the view of someone who hasn't had any involvement in building the page (I came here via recent change patrol... it's been showing up a lot there due to the heavy amount of work being done on it...). I think you're spot on with 1. The hashtag itself probably merits discussion I'm not sure such an amorphous subject matter would make producing a list to WP standards particularly easy - particularly the references, as stand, wouldn't, I think, support the list here at present. GoddersUK (talk) 15:00, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

WP is not a repository, not a directory
Hi All,

I dropped by the other day, from recent changes, and added the list to prose tag to the article. I feel I should probably elaborate a bit, particularly given the large number of IP editors who may not be familiar with WP who have edited this page.

Wikipedia does not function as either a repository or internet directory (WP:NOTREPOSITORY) - that is Wikipedia can talk about the movement behind the hashtag, and significant works considered to be part thereof, but we have to think very carefully before trying to host a comprehensive list. Secondly, unless this list is reproduced in whole, with more or less the same constituents, elsewhere it probably constitutes original research.

For a list such as is in this article a good guideline is often that it should only contain entries which have a page on the English language Wikipedia themselves (and which are wikilinked thereto) AND that have a reliable, NOTABLE, third party source to place them on the list (basically, the fact that many people were tweeting a certain book wouldn't meet notability, the fact that the Guardian (or some other publication) reported that they did would) (which should be included as an inline citation).

Finally, I would suggest that you may find the MOS:LIST pages helpful. If the article is to continue in its present form, dominated by the list, I suggest the article is moved to a title such as "List of works associated with the "#BlackWomenSyllabus" movement", or somesuch.

I can be reached on my talkpage, or here by "mentioning" (wikilink my user page) me. Alternatively you can reach far more experienced editors than I at the helpdesk.

GoddersUK (talk) 14:42, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

EDIT to add: Happy Squirrel, above me, is on the money. They said basically everything I said before me, and I now look like a fool who can't read; my comeuppance for not reading properly before I post, I guess!. GoddersUK (talk) 14:45, 15 August 2015 (UTC)